The Rolex and Jeff Gordon

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I always have trouble figuring out what's going on when I tune into that race. The scroll at the top tells who's in what position at the time but it's usually drivers I never heard of. If you don't know who a drivers teammates are you can't figure out how they are dong. Also hardly any cars on the same lap so you see cars going around 1 at a time.
 
Go to a site that gives you all the team drivers and car numbers. The passing is what your watching because there are actually two races going on at the same time on the same track.
 
Brigeton said:
I always have trouble figuring out what's going on when I tune into that race. The scroll at the top tells who's in what position at the time but it's usually drivers I never heard of. If you don't know who a drivers teammates are you can't figure out how they are dong. Also hardly any cars on the same lap so you see cars going around 1 at a time.
Click to expand...
Spotter's Guide with car numbers, colors, driver line-ups, classes, makes, models. First two pages are the Rolex. Ignore the third page (Friday's Continental race).

http://www.spotterguides.com/portfolio/17_imsa/

If you don't normally follow the sports car or endurance series, why would you expect to recognize the names? Would you recognize the names of drivers in drag racing or riders in motocross if you didn't watch those regularly? At some point in the past, you didn't know any NASCAR drivers either.

This is one of four endurance races in this series (6 hours or longer). It's too long for the two regular drivers on a team to cover by themselves. Each team will bring in between 1 and 3 extra drivers. That's why the Taylor racing team invited Jeff Gordon to pull a couple of shifts, along with former full-time driver Max Angelelli. If you follow IndyCar, some of those drivers are also filling those extra line-up spots this weekend. Occasionally, one driver will even pull shifts for two cars in different classes!

As to the top ticker, it can be a bit confusing. It cycles between each of the four classes, running through each class twice before going to the next one.
  • The first two classes are the exotic looking cars:
    • Prototype cars - white car numbers on red square backgrounds. This indicates a class where all of the drivers are licensed as 'professionals'. There are 12 cars in this class this year. This class has major specification changes for this season - engines, bodies, chassis, almost everything. This class usually wins the overall event, but expect some to struggle with the changes this year.
    • Prototype Challenge - white on green, which indicates the drivers for each car are split between pros and highly qualfied amateurs. With only 5 cars this year, this class will be easy to spot on the ticker since they'll all fit on one screen. This class will be going away next year, which explains the small number of entries this year.
  • The last two classes are based on production cars, although many are only built in very limited numbers. Still, you can see many of the models on city streets.
    • GT Le Mans - white numbers on red again, all drivers are pros. 11 cars. This class usually runs behind the Prototypes overall but since the Ps are having trouble, a GTLM car may steal the show.
    • GT Daytona - white on green, each car will have at least one pro and one amateur. At 27 cars, they're half the field, so if you just glance up at the ticker, there's a 50/50 chance this is the class you'll be looking at.
Occasionally the ticker will show a full-race rundown, so if you're seeing mixed colors on the car numbers, that's what you're looking at. And watch the sides of the cars; they all have LEDs showing you where they're running in their class. They also click off the pit stop times. It's incredibly fan-friendly. (IndyCar does this too. NASCAR talked about a few years ago but hasn't gotten off its collective butt yet.)

As to laps down, remember that this is an endurance race. We've all seen NASCAR events that may have only 8 or 10 lead-lap cars at the end of 400 miles. Last year's Rolex ran over 6.5 times as long (2620 miles)! It also helps to think of this as four races on the same track at the same time, one for each class, not one big individual race. Checking the timing and scoring on IMSA's web site will also help.

http://www.imsa.com/

I'll shut up now. Oh, did I mention is supposed to rain, but these guys mostly don't care? They'll slap on the rain tires and wipers and keep at it.
 
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JG just ****** up. Think he escaped without injury though. Car seems fine.
 
Jeff Gordon concluded an 80-minute stint in the #10 Cadillac prototype in the Rolex 24 shortly before 6 pm/et. Max Angelelli took over and currently runs in 2nd place.
JG COMMENTS [on incident with #70]: "I wanted to be a little bit cautious because I knew I was on cold tires and I don't have the experience that these other guys do. I chose to go to the outside, that was not a good move... I didn't anticipate that Mazda going so slow off pit road. I feel sorry I got into him and spun him."
ON RHYTHM: "Even though it maintains a good lap time throughout the run, they do slide around a little as the rear tires fall off. I like it. I thought that was when I was at my best when the tires starting falling. That was a blast. I just gotta go faster when the tires come in in the early part of the run."
 
How has Gordon looked? Doing an OK job I hope? Every time I've tuned in, someone else is in the car.

Angelelli just stepped out and said he's retiring. I don't know much about the guy, but I like him
 
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